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Pickled Onions

What could be finer? And easier to make?

Having done this before, you need a sack of pickling onions and some vinegar and that's it, sort of. As, when I went for the pickling jars, I discovered that last year's batch of onions hadn't all been eaten. So there weren't enough empty jars to deal with the sackful of pickling onions that had been bought from the local farm shop. In fact, there were still 3 L of onions to eat and now a further 4.5 L to pickle. Oops!

A trip to Amazon was required to get some clip-top pickling jars. Once they had arrived and been washed, they were sterilised in the oven at Gas Mk I until dry, sealed and left to cool.


The method followed was a mish-mash of three [1,2,3] without any spices as the pickling vinegar was pre-spiced.No sugar was added as we like 'em sharp; the lack of it doesn’t affect the pickling process though.

Briefly, the onions were dunked into a large pot of boiling water for 30 seconds or so, then run under the cold tap, after which the skins could be easily peeled off. The onions were salted and left covered overnight. The process was repeated in batches until all the onions were prepped.


The next day the onions were rinsed off under running water and patted dry before being put into the jars for pickling. The vinegar was heated, but not boiled, in a pan before pouring over the onions until they were completely submerged.


The jars were sealed and left to cool before being labelled and stored on the shelf. They'll be ready in a month or two, just in time for Christmas. Huzzah!

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